phone hacking

American  

noun

1. an act or instance of gaining access to a phone's voicemail, email, text messages, etc., without authorization from the phone's owner.

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Other Word Forms

• phone hacker
  noun

Etymology

Origin of phone hacking

First recorded in 1980–85

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

phone hacking

Judge Matthew Nicklin dismissed claims that reporters and investigators working for the Daily Mail had engaged in phone hacking and unlawful information gathering, in a ruling by the High Court Tuesday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026

Last year, he also settled in his court action against Rupert Murdoch's UK tabloid publisher, which agreed to pay him "substantial damages" for privacy breaches, including phone hacking.

From Barron's ● Jan. 20, 2026

Two UK tabloids accused of phone hacking and other "unlawful information gathering" against Prince Harry and six high-profile figures insisted Tuesday they had relied on "legitimate" sources for their stories.

From Barron's ● Jan. 20, 2026

The Mail's editor, Paul Dacre, told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards in 2012 he had carried out a "major internal inquiry" and was "confident" there were no cases of phone hacking by his newspapers.

From BBC ● Jan. 17, 2026

This notion of collective innovation and communal software ownership distanced the act of computer hacking in the 1960s from the tunnel hacking and phone hacking of the 1950s.

From Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Williams, Sam